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I didn't see any place for feedback, so I figured this was as good of a place as any.
The preview of the maps looks solid, although I would love higher res maps. (It doesn't zoom in quite far enough for me.)
Downloading parts of the map took a a while for me to figure out. Nothing is really very clearly marked, so the learning curve is a bit steep. I am assuming the final product would include some sort of "Help" feature in the menu, so that would take care of that problem.
Admittedly, I was too excited to try it out... I didn't actually watch the video first. I watched it after I had been playing with the app for a while.
Other than those two small issues (one of which I already know will be taken care of in the final product), I would say you have done an outstanding job so far. I am absolutely loving it. Two thumbs up!
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Thanks for trying it already! Was the YouTube video helpful? To see it on your Android, you can search for android topo maps in the YouTube app.
The help menu, when available, will probably load some html with instructions. Plus I'm hoping for some quick prompts at startup for what to do first.
Which maps did you try?
Each map type has a suggested range of native resolution between 1 and 20 based on what I've determined experimentally to be its best limits - subject to change of course. For example, MyTopo.com has a suggested range of 6 to 15, while USGS aerial photos have a suggested range of 2 to 17.
Right now, map tiles are rendered at their native resolution. You will be able to zoom in farther once I allow you to zoom in farther than the native resolution. Zooming out past native resolution is a different story because you won't get much that is useful.
I watched the Youtube video... but it was after I had been playing with the app for about 30 minutes. It was definitely a helpful video, but I just caught it a bit late.
I tried all of the maps. mytopo.com maps were definitely my favorite of the bunch.
The UI is great, and it gets better as you play with it more. Everything is very easy to find and use.
I am glad to hear about the zooming. It will definitely be needed.
I can't wait to see where this app goes from here! You are definitely off to an amazing start!
First off I have the Motorola Droid.
So far, this works great. Previewing the maps is incredibly easy. I have no trouble selecting the tiles to download. Downloading is quick.
I run into trouble when I look in my SD card for the files. I can find all the files, but they are listed as numbers. I am assuming these are all the tiles to the maps, but its kinda confusing. I am sure a quick lesson would clear it up.
I went to load these tiles for offline use and it didn't work. I am assuming that this isn't supported yet.
All in all it looks great! I was able to use the my location feature to find myself on the Topo and it got my exact location as I went for a short hike.
I should clarify what I was saying about looking for files. I finally watched the last 40 seconds of the video, which cleared up the fact that I don't have to look on the SD card, at least not right now. Sorry about that!
I did downloaded several map sections. I couldn't figure out how to switch which maps to use offline. I went to maps, and then selected offline, and all that come up was mytopo.com. Does that include all the map sections that I downloaded? I might just be getting ahead of myself...
It does include all the sections you downloaded. If you are centered over an area you downloaded, it will find it and display it without you choosing a file.
Where files *will* come in is in choosing a dataset - a set of waypoints and/or tracks.
Awesome. Thats what I thought. I am downloading the newest beta right now. can't wait to check it out!
Nathan,
With that said, I have downloaded multiple maps of the same area. Does this mean that there is duplicate data on my SD card? If so, would I benefit from deleting all map files and re-downloading one large, complete map with everything I want?
There won't be any duplicate data. That's all checked.
The latest version is fantastic!!!
Having the buttons off the main screen is a great change! Lots more screen room.
The zoom level change is also great! I am able to zoom in plenty far enough to do what I need to do. I plan on using this mostly back country skiing around Lake Tahoe, and MyTopo, USGS, and Sat image maps have all been perfect.
I am going to take it out tonight and make sure it is still tracking me accurately. No force closes, downloading maps is a breeze. So far this is exactly what I was looking for. No need to buy a Garmin anymore!!!
FYI, I went for a short walk and it tracked me perfectly, both on and offline. Accuracy was probably in the 3 meter range.
Is anyone else having trouble downloading larger maps?
I can grab small maps with no issues, but last night I tried to download a mytopo.com map for the state of Vermont, and the download status never changed. It just got stuck on "Calculating tiles". I tried this both via 3g and wifi with the same results. More than 9 hours later, and it still has not had any progress.
It is going to check all million or so tiles to see if it already has them. This would take some time, but probably not all night. It's more likely that the the thread on the background service is dieing before you actually start downloading things.
If you use the free Log Collector App and send a log to me, we can probably flush out where it is failing.
I don't know if the whole state of Vermont will fit on your storage card at level 15 - it might be 50 gig.
oh wow. I'm used to road maps... the whole continent takes 2-4gb.
I will get right on the log collector asap.
FYI - I think I found a bug. While the map tiles are downloading, you cannot cancel the action. Every time I hit cancel on the download, it just comes right back up.
I found the same bug. I cancel the download and then it just re-appears. The only way to stop the download is to force close backcountry nav.
One other issue I might have found is that I tried to download a large map and it was able to calculate the tiles and start the download, but about halfway through (10,000 or so tiles), it stopped. I brought up the download screen where you can either cancel or continue downloading, it said something like "waiting for server." It didn't change for hours so I canceled download. If it happens again I will let you know exactly what it said. I figured it was a connection issue, but I was connected to WiFi at full strength.
That is the same error I get as well. Anything more than about 8000 tiles for me, and I get the error.
Thanks for doing so well at finding this.
Do send logs with Log Collector in case they can provide information.
It's probable that the background service process has failed. If so, you won't be able to contact it.
Android does reserve the right to kill a service to free up memory. I don't know if this is happening - I'll work on the other errors first.
This may take a few more iterations to get more robust, but I already know some of the things I need to do.
I made some great progress yesterday on making the download service more likely to cancel when you want it to and less likely to get closed when it is not done. This will be in this weeks build.
Things seem to be working fine. I didn't try the real GPS, so it was kind of funny to see the map move around as I drove around my neighborhood, but it didn't move anywhere, since it was just cell-tower location. I downloaded a small map of my neighborhood and it went smoothly. Drawing the boxes was nice and easy. Looking forward to the future features coming online.
2 comments:
for some reason it seems slow to download the maps tiles in the "live" mode (i.e. not using the offline map). I'm not sure how many tiles beyond the current location it's pulling or if it's just a weak signal at my house (I haven't had a chance to play more yet).
the 2nd comment is that the app I'm using now for this type of stuff, had a similar "compass" mode, where the map rotates, but it was very jittery while I was driving my truck. BCN seems to have enough of a delay that it looked to be nice an smooth - good job!
Nathan - one question. Will we be able to import google maps/earth .KLM files? I have a file for an off-road park of the trails, park roads, and way-points, etc. It only loads into my free gps app as a single color route lines, while on google, they have different colors defined and you can see all the individual trails, etc. Hoping your app works more like I'd expect. I had a single GPX file that worked like this in the windows BCN version for a different park.
Importing data is very important, and the top formats on our list are .gpx, .loc, and .kml.
It is best to email me samples of the formats you plan to use, so I can work them into a test suite. Even with a defined standard, there can be variants. There wasn't really a standard for color in GPX, but I usually picked it up anyways.
1. It is pulling enough tiles to cover the screen and then some. It's a canvas probably twice as big as the screen. There's more pixels on the screen in the droid than on my G1.
2.Great. I'll need to get more feedback before I declare this solved. I've found the compass sensor to be very prone to jitteryness.
This thing is great!
I have experienced some of the same problems already mentioned. Large map downloads quit part way through. Program has locked up my Droid on some larger downloads and I had to soft reset to get it going again. Seems to really bog down the phone while downloading maps making it almost unusable for anything else. It might be nice to be able to set priority for background downloads (not sure if this is even possible).
Would like to be able to select map area and delete maps too.
When downloading multiple maps at once they all appear in the same line in the task manager. It would be nice to have them appear on separate lines so you can see progress of each, or cancel one while the other continues. I appologize if this has already been addressed in this weeks build.
Would like to have the option to select multiple maps to download at once. So if you select an area for mytopo maps you could have it download aerials at the same time.
Corridor downloading. As you travel, it would automatically download the area around me at a user defined radius.
This program is already by far and away the best mapping program I have found for Android, and it is getting better with every build. Great work on it.
I've already used it on my boat to find fishing spots, and on the north shore of lake Superior while flyfishing remote streams in deep canyons where cell service was out of the question. It has worked great.
In this weeks build, you won"t be able to start more than one download at once. (it may even fail silently). Hopefully, that's temporary, but starting more than one was potentially causing some of the problems. To do multiple downloads without clogging up the phone, it might need a queue of sorts.
Making the service important enough that Android won't kill it may also actually boost the thread priority. Getting it just right might take some more trying.
Been digging the update. Thanks for giving the compass back in the trial. So just curious...I have a Nexus One and the compass seems to be pretty small (taking up the top 1/3 of my screen), was wondering if this is a screen issue of the software or it will be bigger in future builds? Keep rocking it...this software is the best!
The compass size is dependent on the amount of navigation stats we will eventually have on this page. It can get close to half screen without scrolling in portrait and with a bit of scrolling in landscape.
This is more of a suggestion than feedback, but... do you think that a future release would incorporate the option to turn the location marker rather than the whole map to indicate direction? I love the way the map turns now, but there are some instances where it makes it tougher to navigate.
Right now auto center is tied to autorotate, but it doesn't have to be that way. I just need to be able to change it - perhaps in settings.
OK, here are my first impressions on the Android version. I really like what I've seen so far. I downloaded a section between my house and where I work and had the GPS running during my drive. It worked really well, tracking my movement. My compass wasn't well calibrated, so it was rarely pointed in the right direction, but once I got to my parking lot I swung the phone around and it worked much better from there into the building.
I downloaded that first section from mytopo.com and then today I downloaded a similar section from USGS. I made the mistake of trying to start a download of aerial photography while the first download was going. (Hadn't read on here that I shouldn't do that yet.) Took me a while to figure why it wasn't downloading. Once the first download was done though, it still wouldn't start my new download. I went into the Running Services section of Settings and killed the downloader. That made it so I could start the new download.
I noticed that the speed listed on the compass page was in meters per second. Is that the only way it can display, or can I choose what units to use? Also, altitude in feet rather than meters would be more useful to me.
Another thing that might be nice to have would be a GPS status page like the WinMo version. I downloaded a couple of apps to do this, but having it all in one place would be best. Not sure if this was already part of the plan moving forward.
It's definitely a solid start. I can't wait to try this our in the field. I've wanted to try geocaching for a while now, so I'm looking forward to being able to load up waypoint files.
Thanks a million and keep up the good work!
I'm working on queuing downloads so you can start more than one at once.
The compass does not work well around the metal frames of cars.
I expect we will have a flag to turn metric system on or off.
Graphical GPS status is doable. It's not at the top of our list, but not at the bottom either.
I've been trying to download maps from Mapnik, but I'm having trouble. I'm trying to get an area here in Utah from Ogden to Farmington. I don't recall how big the area is, but I don't think it's bigger than a 30 or 40 mile square. I'm downloading the highest zoom level possible, but I'm using my home WiFi connection, so it shouldn't be too bad. When the download gets to a little over 1000 tiles, the phone crashes and reboots. It happened multiple times tonight. If there's any debug info I can gather, let me know.
You should try running the Log Collector app and email a log to support at backcountrynavigator dot com.
Check to see if your storage card is filling up.
Are you referring to the log collector app by Xtralogic? If so, I'll install it and do a couple more downloads and send you the logs. As far as my SD card goes, it's a 16 gig, and I have over 14 gig free on it. Just let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to try.
I'm hoping it will have something useful.
I have at least one other person reporting something like this, also with an HTC Incredible.
I haven't figured out what I've done to cause an all out reset. It does not occur on the G1 or on emulators
There are reports of random reboots on the HTC incredible all over the internet.
http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-incredible-tech-issues/41298-my-new-htc-incredible-keeps-rebooting.html
http://community.vzw.com/t5/Android-Devices/The-not-so-INCREDIBLE-HTC-Incredible-Reboot-Issue/td-p/191740/page/8;jsessionid=283D85E96C15790DA57EDE8549DEEBF7
http://www.programmerfish.com/htc-incredible-ota-update/
It's something to look into, although we could certainly be triggering it via a large download.
Coming from the CrapBerry Storm to the Incredible. (It used to be CrackBerry, but now that I've had the Incredible for 10 days, it is and shall always be a CrapBerry...)
Initial impressions, running on the Incredible, from the very beginning (although, I did watch the video first):
- BCN reminds me somewhat of the MGMaps I was using on the Storm, along with the "Shustrik's .map Creation Tool for MGMaps" at http://www.mapcacher.com and gMapMaker, but a heck of a lot easier to use for offline maps!
- Rather slow downloading preview maps regardless of source. Also, seems like it is not caching any tiles at all. (I mean cache, not save for offline.) 'Course, I'm accustomed to the speed of Google maps, so may be a bit spoiled.
- Downloading of individual tiles seems to go quite well. I'm covering an area of roughly 800 tiles at level 15. Speed is comparable to what I'd been using previously. Multiple simultaneous downloads no problem. Only used WiFi.
- Crashed once when I went to Full Screen from Not Full Screen. Not reproducible, though.
- Menu>Settings command does nothing, but the menu does close.
- Menu>Gps Data does nothing, even the menu doesn't close. (friendly note - GPS is an acronym, therefore should _always_ be written GPS, not Gps.)
- My main use for BCN will be sailing Lake Granby in Colorado. I have a large old-fashioned paper chart that shows the depths of the lake. Eventually I would like to be able to feed that into BCN. I can do the necessary accurate hi-rez photography, but have no idea at this time how I will tile it, name files, etc.
- Love the compass, especially the rotating bezel. Would like to get speed and altitude in mph & feet. Would love it even more with a layout like the Geo panel in Tricorder but prettier (sorry I can't find a screen dump, but the (somewhat ugly) compass layout is very functional with true and magnetic, satellite layout, and all GPS data.
- A nice trip computer with min/max/average speed/distance/altitude/time etc etc etc would be a great addition, too.
- As it is, I'd pay maybe $3. Make the compass panel work like Tricorder but be prettier and I'd go $4.
- Add the trip computer, waypoints, tracks and all that, I'd say $10.
- Give me a tutorial on how to get that depth chart into it, $20 for sure!
Thank You for the opportunity to participate in the beta. I hope you have sufficient resources to soon build this into a great app!
Best,
Tom
Thank you.
We'll aim for your ten dollar order. Beyond that, we can make it even better *if* people are buying it.
I've put up a poll about whether the compass should be bigger, or remain small so I can fit more trip computer information on the same screen.
I just installed the latest build and noticed that the text field to enter the trip file name seems to be set to a password text field so the characters are hidden with '*'.
Also, if I give a waypoint a name it does not remember it or its description. Always uses original name designated by the application. Maybe that was not ready for this build.
The preview from email seemed to work well.
I love the N arrow overlay but it can be difficult to see on certain map areas. Could we get an option to change its opacity/color?
In case you are interesed I am testing it on Froyo on my development Nexus One and everything seems fine there.
Thanks,
Andrew
1. The trip name wasn't intended to be that sensitive. I'll certainly fix that.
2. Waypoint name and description *should* be saved when you leave the waypoint page, and it does work on my G1 and on a 2.2 emulator. If it is failing silently, there could be an error that you could use XtraLogic Log Collector to send to me.
Hi, I have been using the Android Beta of BCN and recently I used it to help navigate via canoe to my campsite and the Offline maps worked perfectly and I a looking forward to BCN for my many upcoming hiking, and Canoeing trips. I did find it somewhat cumbersome to recall my way-points by pressing and holding on the way-point icon, I seemed to miss the icon when the canoe was rocking :), perhaps a list that would accommodate "fat" fingers would be nice that could be sorted by time or name.
Also, I have a couple of questions/requests: Is there anything in the works to be able to create and view tracks within a "Trip"? It would also be nice to be able to have multiple tracks within a trip and then be able to view them as layers to see my different paths I made within a Trip and then have the ability to export them to some type of file such as a klm, loc or gpx file? And second, are there any plans to be able to add pictures or voice annotations to tracks/trips.
Thank you for the excellent product.
Jon
Selecting a single waypoint is not likely to be the only way for long. I believe a full screen list of nearest waypoints will solve a lot of things.
While they are not ready yet, tracks are intended to be part of a trip file and to be exportable.
Nathan,
I just wanted to post on how things have been working since it has been a while since I left feedback. All in all it has worked great. All the features you have been adding have been amazing and I am very happy with the app. The only real issue I have had has been with the compass. This seems to be a droid issue since the other compasses I have dont work that great either. I noticed another post about the compass not working well inside a car, and I think that goes for being around any major metallic objects in general. I have tried to re-calibrate the phone which helps, but it looks like I will have to do that more often. Anyways, it doesn't appear to be a problem with the app, but I figured I would mention it.
Market update: I got the newsletter on the app being on the market. Are we going to have to install that app, or is it going to be the same build we are using now. I will be leaving 5 star feedback as soon as I find it! Thanks again for all the hard work!
Brett
There aren't major new features in the market build, but I have fixed at least three rare issues that were reported since last Friday. Plus it will expire July 15th instead of June 30th.
If you update from the market, it will also keep you updated.
Too bad about the compass. My G1 is always getting off because I have a magnetic holster. One thing we could do, although it is a step backward in some ways, is to snap to the GPS heading when speed is nonzero. Then you are getting direction from the satellites.
Nathan,
I downloaded the demo of the market with no trouble, and I purchased the license. But I cant seem to download it. It will tell me its authorized and purchased, but then says download failed. Any idea what is going on?
There are a few bugs in Android Market related to a particular settings.
I've seen complaints about this before, so I will find out from other developers and report back.
In the meantime, I;ve turned off that setting, so it may just work for you now.
Just checking.
Nathan. I have a stock moto droid. I was able to download the license, but I don't know how to unlock it. I tried to open it and it says "app not installed on your phone."
It worked.
The license key app will forward to the demo app, and that's probably what the message complained about. The license key just has to be installed and the demo app will look
This is a little nonintuitive, but blame Google and their market for that. They *could* give us a better mechanism for timed trials.
Thank you for all the work you have done on tracks. They work wonderfully. However, there is a small bug.
The timestamp on waypoints in tracks is not the right format. I think it should be something like "26-09:17.21". But really, it is "1280676878000". I need this to work for the app to work for me. When you fix this, I will buy it.
Thanks for the development.
Sincerely,
Leko
I'm planning on the "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'" format when exporting to GPX.
Thank you for removing the three icons in the upper left area of the map screen. They are seldom used, and take away valuable screen space. The fact that they magically come back when the screen is touched is perfect. And, the amount of time it takes them to disappear again is just right. I hated those things, but did not want to complain, because overall this product is awesome. I also like the fact that the GPS icon is gone when not needed, along with the "north" indicator. I like all the little enhancements in this version.